As a hotel and lodge owner, you likely need to do more than ever to attract and retain guests. To aid in deciding where to focus your limited energy for marketing actions, Africa’s Eden reached out to Sarah Habsburg, an expert in responsible tourism and assisting small and medium tourism enterprises in marketing their businesses.
Here are Sarah’s five marketing actions she feels all hotels and lodge owners should prioritise today:
In an interview in May 2020, I raised eyebrows when I quoted a WTTC statistic stating that the average recovery from a pandemic is 21 months. No one wanted to hear that during the first turbulent months after Covid rocked our worlds.
My aim was to emphasise the importance of accepting that the need to adapt our businesses would require a longer-term strategy than any of us were perhaps capable of contemplating at that time.
As you are still a member of Africa’s Eden Tourism Association, it means you made it, and that is no small feat. However, continuing to adapt and pivot is critical to building a more resilient business for the future.
Resilience was a buzzword during the pandemic. Now we need to focus on adaptation.
The difference is that resilience relates to our ability to acquire new capabilities to emerge stronger from a specific struggle. It has a finite connotation.
Adaptation in a biological context is the adjustment of organisms to their environment to improve their chances of survival. It continues over time.
Adjusting is the key word here. Adjusting how we used to do business and letting go of the idea that things will return to exactly how they used to be.
International tourism has not yet fully returned, so continuing to adapt your knowledge to guarantee sustained income from the national market is a great way to work towards that coveted business resilience.
Smart marketing decisions can help you with this.
There is a lot to do to embrace that continued focus on national and to strengthen your online presence so that longer-haul Africa trip researchers have the best possible chance of finding you.
So, let’s get started with the 5 marketing actions all lodge owners should prioritise today.
Just a quick comment on the word “today,” though! I refer to “today” in the looser sense of the word. Today is when you read this and absorb the value of doing this work.
Tomorrow (and possibly for the rest of the week) you will let this information percolate. Your body and mind will wholeheartedly resist. Not only because we are creatures of habit but also because you are running a busy business and find it hard to imagine how you can carve out the time to learn and implement something new.
But the information this article contains will stick in your mind. When it does, take action. Get started. Embrace the fact that it is a holistic process.
Marketing Priority #1: Get great at Google!
Google is a giant, and it can seem overwhelming to those without dedicated marketing teams to get clued up about it.
With a 92% market share of all search engine enquiries, it is the biggest search engine in the world, and it is also growing super-fast and moving into the travel space.
I am all for breaking things down and for taking small steps that make big differences, which is why I teach how to tackle getting great at Google in three parts:
- Understand how Google ranks your website
- Do the important (finite) tech stuff
- Optimise your site specifically for Google Travel
There is quite a lot to say on each topic, and I do 60-minute trainings on each of these sections. However, for now, here is a quick overview:
Understand how Google ranks your website
The inner working of Google is an ethereal, evolving, omnipresent entity. To rank your website, it sets out on a voyage of discovery that can be broken down like this:
First, Google “crawls” (or reads) your site looking for high-quality, relevant information and puts it into its index, which is basically a huge database where Google categorises all published information.
It then uses its algorithm to determine if your content is what the searcher is looking for. To determine this “relevance”, Google uses a handful of factors such as keyword relevance, how long website visitors stay on your site, and how often you publish new content on your site.
It then looks to determine the quality of your published information and of your site by searching for backlinks from other reputable websites.
An example is if your regional tourist office or local online newspaper were to publish and share a link to your website from theirs. This tells Google you are a trustworthy site that contains information that is interesting enough to share. This is where traction starts.
But of course, it is not quite that simple. Google’s algorithm is also interested in other factors that spill over into more traditional search engine optimisation actions. This is why there is some tech stuff that you can check on to make sure your site is as optimised as possible.
Do the important (finite) tech stuff
Factors such as site speed, mobile-friendliness, and site security can heavily influence how Google ranks your page in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Investing just a few minutes to check on this using the following free tools is the best overall health check you can do for your site. Recording this baseline data and taking action on the results it throws up is an essential step toward understanding how to make Google work for you.
Review your site speed here: https://pagespeed.web.dev/
Check for mobile-friendliness here: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
Take a look at your website address on Google. Is there a padlock to the left of your URL, and when you click on it, does it say, “Connection is secure”?
Optimising your site specifically for Google Travel
Google has launched free Hotel Booking listings, granting visibility to any hotel with an optimised Google My Business page. They also have integrated rates into Google Maps, meaning travellers can visualise their options in a specific geographical area.
The most important thing you can do here is to spend time updating your Google My Business page because, without it, you cannot appear on Google’s free Hotel Booking listings.
So, that is just a quick overview, but understanding Google is just the beginning. Much of this list of 5 marketing strategies hotel and lodge owners should prioritise today is intrinsically linked to improving and optimising how Google finds and ranks your website. So, let’s take a closer look.
Marketing Priority #2: Clarify the value in your offer
When a potential customer lands on your website in just a few seconds, is it clear why they should choose your property over any other?
Maybe they found you when researching hotels and lodges on an OTA. They like the look of your property and Google the name to see if they can get a better deal on your own website – this is called the (highly underrated) Billboard Effect. Would they immediately get you? Would they see the value you can offer them?
These are tough questions, but that above-the-fold section on your website (the bit you see on a desktop when you first open the page) is critical in that customer’s decision to stay on your site or close it. If they close it, this increases your bounce rate, which is also a factor that negatively influences your Google ranking.
Before you fall into despair about how to make your hotel or lodge stand out online, I have a way to help you determine what makes you different.
First, understand your brand personality. Second, spend some time looking at your own values. Third, determine the ways your brand personality and own values connect with your current customer profiles and your offer.
Once this work is done, it is time to get bold with the messaging of your value offer. Again, keeping it as short and succinct as possible is crucial to success. I work with people to create these UVPs all the time, and it is surprisingly easy when you have a guide to help you for the simple reason that often, property owners are just too close to their businesses.
One tip I can share with you today is what you think makes you stand out is not necessarily what your customers think it is. Use your past reviews to get insights into what they have enjoyed.
Marketing Priority #3: Define two sustainability actions
Sustainability action is filtering into all industries, from fashion to aviation, in response to increasing environmental and social crises.
Put quite simply; it is the right thing to do to get clear on ways you can be kinder to the planet and support the local community where your business is located.
Think of this as a way to reinforce your values and further connect with your audience.
It is also great to supercharge your content library and get people to notice you. It can grant you a competitive advantage; however, this should not be the only reason. You should be inspired to create a better place for people to live in purely because it IS your own backyard.
Why do I suggest defining two sustainability actions?
The idea here is to choose one internal and one external action.
You can easily control the internal one; you own it, can create baseline data around it, and can share positive improvements and feedback. This could be something like measuring and reducing food waste.
The external one is a way to get involved in your community on a much higher level. This could be supporting a local artisan or working towards clearing a waterway or building a new bridge. It does not matter what the action is, but I appeal to you to choose something you resonate with to guarantee continuity over time. Making a choice based on what you think are the best marketing actions or what will make you look good is not a good reason. It will turn into greenwashing and set the scene for failure.
Marketing Priority #4: Create cornerstone content… in different formats
Creating content can feel draining, right? I often hear from clients that coming up with content ideas is not the only most challenging part, but carving out the time to create the content can be challenging when days are so busy.
Also, some people don’t feel “qualified” enough to write blogs or shoot videos. But I teach a structure to write blogs that you can follow, and I encourage action, not perfection when shooting a video.
My concept of cornerstone content has changed how the hotel and lodge owners I work with view their content creation strategies. It is all about topic pillars, which, again, is all about structure. Structure helps you stay in control of your content ideas, and feeling in control is a huge part of sticking to the plan and staying consistent with your content strategy.
Also, the consistency of fresh content is the one thing that Google LOVES! Without it, when it crawls your site, even if it finds excellent load speed, mobile-friendliness, and a secure URL, it will not reward you the way it could if you are not consistently creating great content.
So, if blogs with information that resonates with your target customers help Google find your site, what about videos?
I often get asked about social media marketing, and yes, short-form video content is on fire right now. For example, TikTok is shaking the travel space in ways we could not have imagined, but I know it is not for everyone. YouTube, however, is a different ball game. Why? Because Google owns it. Their search engines are inextricably linked, so if you start putting some great content on YouTube, you guessed it, you start showing up more on Google.
Marketing Priority #5: Embrace email marketing
I know someone has told you to get on the email marketing bandwagon before, and you might have dismissed it as either outdated or too much work. But I guarantee that when it is done properly, it is a fantastic tool for encouraging people to click through to your Book Now button.
The pivot to the national market that was seen by many as a temporary fix during the pandemic has morphed into the realisation that there are many business opportunities in your backyard. This can, of course, range from family holidays and school groups to business meetings and events.
Once you’ve defined who you want to communicate with, start to work out how you want to engage them. The FABULOUS thing about email marketing is that you can automate everything! For example, if someone downloads a pdf from your website or just clicks on a certain link in an email, you get to decide what information is sent to them next.
This involves understanding who you are talking to and also what action you want them to take, plus a bit of customer buying psychology thrown into the mix.
I love this part of working with clients. There is always some resistance to creating a solid email strategy at the outset. It is an unknown world for many, but once people see the logic of how it works, they are hooked!
A word of warning, though. Not every email should be a sales pitch. Instead, you should focus on engaging and inspiring most of the time, mixed with just a handful of perfectly crafted and well-timed email campaigns that showcase a relevant offer.
So, that’s it. Here is a quick recap of the top 5 marketing actions and priorities for lodge owners:
- Marketing Priority #1: Get great at Google!
- Marketing Priority #2: Clarify the value in your offer
- Marketing Priority #3: Define two sustainability actions
- Marketing Priority #4: Create cornerstone content… in different formats
- Marketing Priority #5: Embrace email marketing
Of course, there is so much more to marketing your lodge or camp, but this is a start to get you into a place where you begin to curiously assess what you are currently doing and craft a solid content marketing strategy for the next few months.
I invite you to download my Master Guide to More Hotel Direct Bookings here to find out more, and I hope to see you on one of my 30-day challenges, where I will help you tailor these generic marketing strategies to your needs so they become efficient sales tools for your property.
Bio: Sarah Habsburg
Sarah holds a Masters in International Responsible Tourism Management from the ICRT at Leeds Beckett University and relocated to Austria in 2019 after over two decades in Chile. She gained vast experience in the tourism industry by leading cultural, adventure, and nature tours across the Latin American continent before setting up a backpacker’s hostel and then managing a luxury lodge at the foot of a live volcano in Chile’s adventure tourism capital, Pucón. Sarah also holds a teacher training qualification from the UK and worked as a tourism curriculum moderator in Chile. The 2010 8.8 earthquake and the 2015 eruption of the Villarrica volcano drove Sarah to create resilience and survival strategies that were successfully applied by many accommodation owners in the area and are more relevant than ever today.
Sarah now consults for small, independent hotels, lodges, B&Bs, and hostels and is committed to delivering information in a way that is implementable, relatable, and applicable to SMEs. A strategic thinker, Sarah thrives at breaking down complex concepts into digestible training materials that humanise the current challenges of the hospitality industry. She is also committed to ensuring knowledge progression and lifelong commitment to responsible and sustainable tourism practices, so we can reduce our footprints and create better destinations to live in and visit.
Get in touch:
www.facebook.com/groups/buildingtourismresilience/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahhabsburg/